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The event kicked off the Office for Minority Health's first "College to Community Health Outreach Week."
"I dream of the day when we will say, 'This place used to be a cemetery, but now it's a playground,'" said Wharton.
"Little babies could run on these hills and fall and not even get
hurt," he said, pointing back to the 402 purple ribbons that
represented the number of babies who died in 2006-2007 before reaching
age 1 in Shelby County.
"We need to take care of our babies and get them to their first
birthday," he said. "At St. Jude (Children's Research Hospital), they
say no child should die in the dawn of life. I would like to erect a
sign saying, 'In Shelby County, no child will die in the dawn of life.'" Wharton is in the process of hiring a team that will review every
infant mortality case in the county and determine the "exact" cause of
death, he said, in an effort to answer the question of why black women
are far more likely than any other ethnicity to lose a child.
Black infants were three times as likely as white infants to die in
Shelby County from 2005-2006, said Dr. Kenneth Robinson, County Health
Officer. He also said half of the babies who died had no prenatal care
and three-fourths were born premature.
Lewis-Lee, national spokeswoman for the Office of Minority Health's
two-year-old "A Healthy Baby Begins With You" campaign, under the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, said Memphis was a special
mark on her map because of the startlingly high infant mortality rates
here. It's the highest of any city in the country and almost twice the
national average.
A camera crew accompanied her Sunday and began filming a documentary about the campaign during the press conference.
"If we can make a difference here, then we can anywhere," said Lewis-Lee.
OMH's black infant mortality awareness campaign focuses on
preconception education. The idea is to train students at historically
black colleges to become Preconception Peer Educators, PPE, and then
send them into underprivileged areas to connect with residents in their
age group and younger.
"It's critical to have young people speak with other young people," said Lewis-Lee. "They know the language."
Dr. Sheldon Korones, who established the newborn center at the
Regional Medical Center at Memphis more than 40 years ago, said
targeting women who have previously lost children would be more
effective.
"We could probably get to the problem more directly if we can
predict, on the front end, who is going to have small babies," said
Korones, who did not attend the press conference. "A lot of the time,
if a woman has a baby below 3 pounds, she is far more likely to have
another one."
However, Lewis-Lee said in an interview later that she thought
focusing on mothers who had already lost a child would be "missing the
boat, because that is one life already lost."
Lewis-Lee's husband, Spike Lee, is set to join her Saturday at a
health fair at World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church on 6655
Winchester Road from 2 to 6 p.m. |
